Purpose – The paper seeks to explore the implications of a critical approach to theory and method in
the study of social enterprises and social entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach – The paper presents a re-reading of the findings in a major
case-study based research programme. The author reflexively re-evaluates the findings and compares
them to different theoretical traditions to identify whether these theoretical lenses shed further insight
on the raw findings.
Findings – The analysis indicates that the theoretical perspectives of “contractualism”,
“managerialism” and “agencification” are good explanatory frameworks for the data produced in
the research but so too are “militant decency”, “social movements” and “post-liberal” theories. As well
as illustrating the limits of knowledge, the exercise also indicates that the apparent weakness and
failure identified in the case studies are evidence of a “recalcitrance and resistance” that is essential to
the emerging identity of the social enterprises.
Practical implications – The paper highlights the importance of being honest to the complexity
and ambiguity of data produced in field research and that some important findings can be missed
when “outlier” data are ignored. The re-evaluation of data on this basis also indicates that weakness
and failure in social enterprises should not be avoided and worked out of the system. Rather, operating
in the context of weakness, failure, recalcitrance and passivity are the grit in the pearl that make social
enterprise so valuable.
Originality/value – The paper contributes, in its critical theory approach, to method and analysis in
the field of social enterprise research. The paper indicates that no single theoretical structure fully
explains social enterprise and that existing critical management theories shed significant new light on
the field. The paper, in applying an experimental approach to theory, also highlights the small amount
of work that has been done in the field on failure, doubt, weakness and humility.
Paper type - Conceptual paper